9600 GSO on Thermaltake 430W PSU?

[novice]

Anyone out there tried to run an Asus Geforce 9600 GSO 384 mb card with an older Thermaltake 430W power supply? This PSU has run my son's old Socket 939 system for the past several years, 3 HD's, 2 DVD RW, Athlon 64 3700 single core, Geforce 7900GS, 2 GB PC-3200 ram.
Anyone have any idea if the 9600 GSO would be a decent upgrade for the 7900GS? It was a pretty good card in its' day. I think I paid $185 for it when I bought it. The new 9600 GSO is $35 after rebate, including COD 5 game WaW. Would the CPU limitation make the upgrade attempt silly? I just put one of the 9600 GSO's into my wife's Emachine, with a Rosewill400W PSU and a 64x2 5600 at 2.9 Ghz, and it was a very nice upgrade from the 8500GT, XP3800 single core and stock emachine PSU that was in it.
Just wondering if I should upgrade the power supply in the kid's machine, too. Or just buy/build a whole new system.
Thanks for any input.

 

[Stumps]

a 9600GS0 should be a snack for a 430W PSU...but double check the 12v rails against what the manufacturer reccomends.

A 9600 GSO should be a decent improvement over an old 7900GS even when using an old A64 single core.

 

[Schmide]

Originally posted by: novice
Or just buy/build a whole new system.

:thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:

Just because kids love new systems. XP is entering its end of life cycle and you could get an upgrade for your XP OS to 7 for $50 if pre-ordered before the 11th. Then come around October 22 when windows 7 releases.

Get a combo like this $120 (you're actually going down in power)

So for
$205 = $35 (vc) + $50(OS) + $120 (CPU+mb+ram)

You get a very decent system.

That PSU though not the greatest as it is rated at 18a on the 12v. (from one famous review it can apparently only deliver 16a) Still plenty for your level of hardware.

You do have a bit of drives, but they really only tax the PSU during spinup. A 9600gso 384mb max draws around 7a, while a 7900gs consumes about half that. Your system should be fine. With your above system you're probably around 10-12a on the 12v line. ~66% of your PSU.

 

[NYHoustonman]

Posted this in the Hot Deals thread, but I have it working on an In Win 350W power supply, although it has more current on the 12v rails (combined).
As others have mentioned, though, the rest of that system is due for an upgrade, and everything is so cheap right now that it won't cost you very much.

 

[AstroManLuca]

My old rig had that crappy Thermaltake "430W" (more like 250W judging from the awful 12V rail) and it was capable of running a Radeon 3850.

 

[novice]

Thanks for the replies. I got the 9600 GSO installed. ($35 after rebate delivered with free COD 5 WaW game, what a deal) I also picked up a new Coolermaster 460W PSU with 2 12V rails that they claim 18A on each of them. Just for fun I installed the game first to try to see how it would run on the old 7900GS (not a bad card in its' day) and the new game would not launch! So I installed the new 9600 GSO and then and only then, would the game play. I guess when they say OEM, they mean OEM. IT seemed to run fine on the Thermaltake PSU using the provided 4 pin molex to 6 pin PCI-E power adapter. But I wasn't sure how much longer the old Thermaltake would last running the 3 hard drives, 2 fans, 2 DVD burners, 2 gb DDR-400 and the A64 3700 CPU, so I went ahead and installed the new Coolermaster PSU. The only drawback was the Coolermaster only came with 3 of the 4 pin molex power connectors, so I had to buy a Y splitter adapter to be able to run my older components (IDE HD's and DVD burners) My kid likes the new video card and thinks it does play the games better than the old 7900GS. I figure $65 after rebate for the new PSU, Video card and COD WaW was a worthwhile investment.
Now to keep an eye on the bargain motherboard/CPU specials to finish the system overhaul. Already have 2x1 GB sticks of PC-800 DDR 2 ram laying around.